Activist Ales Bialiatski was fined $65,000 for smuggling and funding protests
The Leninsky District Court in Minsk (Belarus) has sentenced Nobel Peace Prize winner Ales Bialiatski to 10 years in prison. He was accused of smuggling and financing protests. Bialiatski was also fined approximately US$65,000 (R$338,000 at current prices). The activist’s defense has 10 days to appeal. The information comes from the digital newspaper Axios and the news agency Tass.
Bialiatski is a human rights activist in Belarus and was recognized in October 2022 for his work at the Vesna Human Rights Center. He was arrested during demonstrations against Belarus’ 2020 elections that kept President Aleksandr Lukashenko in power.
Representatives of the Vesna organization, Valentin Stefanovich and Vladimir Labkovich, were also sentenced to 9 and 7 years in prison, respectively. They are being held in a maximum security prison. The defendants were each fined approximately US$40,000 (R$208,000 at current prices).
Stefanovich and Labkovich were arrested in July 2021 and put on trial on January 5, 2023. The two pleaded not guilty.
In January 2022, a court in Gomel classified all content produced by the Vesna Center as extremist.
This was announced by the Belarusian opposition leader Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya in her profile chirp that the trial of Bialiatski and the other defendants was “simply terrible”.
European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said that “there is an attempt to silence them [ativistas] will fail”.
Bialiatski was arrested in August 2011 and sentenced in November to 4½ years in a maximum security prison for tax evasion. He didn’t admit his guilt. In June 2014 he was released before the end of his sentence.